I can't help but think that Renaissance architects,inspired by science and logic and reason correlates to Reem's way of working where figuring out program and programmatic relationships (reason and logic) result in architecture where form is byproduct.
On the other hand Greg Lynn, theorist, believes in movement, and calculus, and natural systems in architecture, all important ideas to the Baroque masters. Baroque was considered grotesque ( fanciful animal forms exaggerated to absurdity) Look at Hernan Diaz's Fall Class at Columbia, where most of the students created grotesque fluid towers reminiscent of creatures, skeletal forms, and animals.
What do you guys think? Does history repeat itself?
If Lynn’s “codes†are the DNA from which architecture “grows†then wouldn’t the logical extension of the metaphor (and that’s what it is guys, face it) is that we who propagate his ideas and build his work (or would if got built) are just ribosomes who follow along the code and synthesize objects and that our culture is just some sort cytoplasm in which all this stuff swims (maybe Sylvia is a voracious phagocyte who goes around devouring anything that threatens the propagation of the code).
I’m an anti-humanist and can be a bit nihilistic at times but the only theoretically interesting part of Lynn’s project is to argue for the utter pointlessness of life. I hope its just some foppish baroque (rococo?) side project of modernism because if we take it seriously we have to give up hope in a lot of things that make living worth it for me.
On the other hand take Oscar Niemeyer with his bootilicious “form follows feminine†swoopy concrete. A swinging Latin playboy to be sure, (an attitude which I hope is now quaint and retro and nothing more) but there’s a guy who knows what he wants. A real honest-to-god rhyzomatic desiring machine.
even nox refers "gothic" ...
here goes one from machining architecture;
"line to surface. Rather than breaking a surface into lines we can follow the reverse procedure, a gothic logic: lines bifurcating and weaving into surfaces. For anyone interested in continuity, Gothic line surface configurations are mind baggling. Simple curved figures are interlaced into a manifold of larger configurations, not only for aesthetic reasons but also for structural ones. In no architectural style has the figure of the arabesque been developed beyond the ornamental except by the gothic builders."
Metamechanic: Sure Lynn has been there, and some have done that of his teachings. Lets say we follow what you prescribe: "math to understand biological systems."(It's like using logic and reason to justify organic form") or deconstruction to understand our understanding of biological systems in a mathematical sense (same idea as above)", the process becomes rationalistic which architects love, but at the end... we make space and form...how can that be truly representative of math or the dynamic ever changing and evolving biological system.Although our PROCESS could be rooted in biological systems through a mathematical sense, the end result, our ARCHITECTURE ,is stationary, representative, metaphorical, of this understanding. OUr buildings are not dynamic living breathing moving systems, it literally does not move, it cannot. It is inhabited; it is not growth forms. Can we really go beyond the building? So in conclusion I feel that architects throughout history prefer reason and logic and they genuinely dislike intuition, which in western culture prescribes the masculine (logical) vs. feiminine (intuitive). Thus the use of math, logic and reason to justify things is encouraged, while intuition is usually frowned upon. Which is why Frank Gehry is hated (the extreme) and Rem Koolhaas adored.
Eww, I saw an article in here about MIT students who have created mock up of mechanized buildings which move in response to environmental stimuli. Is that where we are headed , or is that some utopian vision?
<embed allowScriptAccess="never" src="http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf?u=YUhSMGNEb3ZMMk52Ym5SbGJuUXViVzkyYVdWekxtTmtiaTV0ZVhOd1lXTmxMbU52YlM4d01EQTNNek01THprd0x6VTVMemN6TXprMU9UVXdPUzVtYkhZPQ==&d=97" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="600" height="600"></embed><br>Get this video and more at MySpace.com
Metamechanic: But do you think you might be looking too hard. Our buildings are already space and matter... The have plumbing, electricity, movement behind the walls. Thoughts through wireless connections In essense we have already created buildings that are organic in form, that mimic the natural world around us.
And when you think of this, the plumbing, electricity, wireless connections, as space and matter and organic systems, living and breathing, would you not say it is in essence a metaporical prescription?
If you want to do real “living systems†architecture and not metaphorical poseur stuff what about this. Get a bunch of BEAVERS genetically engineer them to build their dams all together and not know when to stop. Then genetically engineer them to think that huge dams are really sexy have them build dams until the available space is all gone and then move down stream or outwards in concentric rings. Then send them to New Orleans to build levies. In the next hurricane the ones with the less structural sound dams would get wiped out leaving the good ones to breed furiously. The forms of these dams would be truly evolutionary and non designed.
Then we can get some termites set up to chew up McMansions and build giant mud towers full of affordable housing.
It’ll be like Karl Kepecks “war with the newts†.
Newstreamlinedmodel: you think alot through socio political economic structures. Greg Lynn's followers as extensions, beavers to describe the survival of the fitest. Do you have an economics background?
metamechanic: Our buildings are "Dumbed down space and matter"? When do your buildings become "sophisticated" space and matter... plumbing and wireless as " counter productive" and towards the "bottom"? ( I am fascinated by your ideas) but those are harsh generalizations... perhaps too difficult to elaborate on a thread. Anyway... I have not read biomimicry and will this summer.
"if we to take beavers to build dams, we are accepting that their nature is to complicated for us to repeat so we slightly modify them to create what we want."---- In the olden days this was called INTUITION
My economics back ground comes mostly from struggling to make rent in the city. My favorite discussion of metaphor is in JD’s “white mythology†which then leas nicely to “architecture of deconstruction†by Wigley.
Intuition is good if you understand that you, your body, the processes going on in your brain are a machine and the there are parts of you that you don’t have conscious access to. Your tastes are shaped by things larger than you’re self, you are imbedded in history your desires and drives come from dark sources, we work by compulsions and fixations.
To turn to a computer as a mind like your own except more “rational†or “smart†or even “clean†is to turn to an other that is actually less smart and definitely more boring than a person. What does a machine know about our desires that we don’t tell it.
I found similar correlations when I was teacing art history during grad school. I didn't make any connections to Rem and the Renaissance - though one might argue an association with Platonic laws and Phenomenology - but I agree Lynn is Baroque. The term baroque means "misshapen pearl" and what differentiates Baroque art from Renaissance art is that it emphasizes a sense of time. A still life is a good way to understand Baroque because they can show different elements in various states of life/death. I remember researching this at the time and found there was a woman teaching a course at Columbia. Can't remember her name....
oh wait...I remember what else I thought at the time....that Modern architecture was similar to the Renaissance because of its euclidean geometry. I associated this with mathematical perspective............
i've read many articles which refer to Peter Zumthor's work as having elements of baroque in them. yet his work seems so different to Greg Lynn. i'm not sure that greg Lynn is baroque as his work relies too much on its metaphor and less on the buildings realised atmosphere.
May 18, 06 9:17 pm ·
·
yet another chapter of reenactionary architecturism...
colin rowe and venturi saw their projects as being mannerist forms of modernism (the major bone of contention between the two was the form that modern mannerism should take--collage city on one hand and the decorated shed on the other)
and wasn't a lot of lynn's (and others) work from the folding period based on deleuze's "the fold: leibniz and the baroque", at least in its post-rationalization?
i do think this renaissance, mannerism, baroque corollary is interesting when applied to modern, post-modern, and whatever -ism we are now in (i guess you can take your pick, right?)
if you follow that logic, then i would put rem in either mannerist or baroque--his project is basically a warped form of modernism
That is a pretty strange argument. Deleuze, was drawing a parallel between Leibniz and baroque architecture. You just said that Greg then re-imports the analogy back in to architecture from Deleuze instead of just being baroque, which is an architecture thing in the first place. Lynn gets Deleuze totally wrong as far as I can see but he does do a baroque thing with modernism.
blah, blah, blah.....is it just that my coffee hasn't kicked??!!? I was sleeping to Lynn's bs 8 years ago, he's not built or done anything, and yet his name keeps showing up!! Jesus.
His buildings are ugly. Gehry's buildings are pretty. Pretty buildings are better than ugly buildings. That about sums it all up. BS puts everyone to sleep and no one remembers or cares (beyond the young arch student and a very few random profs that need to keep recirculating the bs to keep a job). In the end, crumpled paper wins over long winded Maya games.
Yup, all seems pretty clear.
May 19, 06 9:24 am ·
·
Try my patented Baroque Pregnancy test. If you fulfill all of the following requirements, then you are "bestimmt Barock".
1. does your work manifest a bifurcation of the real and the illusory?
2. does your work introduce mirroring as a henceforth dominant theme?
3. does your work invert reality into a reenactment of its own illusory mirror?
If you cannot answer yes to any of the above questions, then you are unfortunately not Baroque, however, you can now try my new patented fertility pills.
"I passed the Schlittenfahrt Baroque Pregnancy test, so you can too. Try it today!"
newstreamlinemodel, well after a full weekend of Brazil Beaches it could be easy to fall in with Oscars Crowd. He still has an amazing impact on design in this country and I am forever greatful. Just this morning at the hotel breakfast the staff had arranged all of the little
non-sugar packets around the perimeter of the sauce which also held the sugar bowl. Where there is design in Brazil it is done with great care.
May 21, 06 6:01 pm ·
·
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.
Reem=Renaissance Greg Lynn=Baroque
I can't help but think that Renaissance architects,inspired by science and logic and reason correlates to Reem's way of working where figuring out program and programmatic relationships (reason and logic) result in architecture where form is byproduct.
On the other hand Greg Lynn, theorist, believes in movement, and calculus, and natural systems in architecture, all important ideas to the Baroque masters. Baroque was considered grotesque ( fanciful animal forms exaggerated to absurdity) Look at Hernan Diaz's Fall Class at Columbia, where most of the students created grotesque fluid towers reminiscent of creatures, skeletal forms, and animals.
What do you guys think? Does history repeat itself?
If Lynn’s “codes†are the DNA from which architecture “grows†then wouldn’t the logical extension of the metaphor (and that’s what it is guys, face it) is that we who propagate his ideas and build his work (or would if got built) are just ribosomes who follow along the code and synthesize objects and that our culture is just some sort cytoplasm in which all this stuff swims (maybe Sylvia is a voracious phagocyte who goes around devouring anything that threatens the propagation of the code).
I’m an anti-humanist and can be a bit nihilistic at times but the only theoretically interesting part of Lynn’s project is to argue for the utter pointlessness of life. I hope its just some foppish baroque (rococo?) side project of modernism because if we take it seriously we have to give up hope in a lot of things that make living worth it for me.
On the other hand take Oscar Niemeyer with his bootilicious “form follows feminine†swoopy concrete. A swinging Latin playboy to be sure, (an attitude which I hope is now quaint and retro and nothing more) but there’s a guy who knows what he wants. A real honest-to-god rhyzomatic desiring machine.
even nox refers "gothic" ...
here goes one from machining architecture;
"line to surface. Rather than breaking a surface into lines we can follow the reverse procedure, a gothic logic: lines bifurcating and weaving into surfaces. For anyone interested in continuity, Gothic line surface configurations are mind baggling. Simple curved figures are interlaced into a manifold of larger configurations, not only for aesthetic reasons but also for structural ones. In no architectural style has the figure of the arabesque been developed beyond the ornamental except by the gothic builders."
Reem=Rem Koolhaas, sorry
Metamechanic: Sure Lynn has been there, and some have done that of his teachings. Lets say we follow what you prescribe: "math to understand biological systems."(It's like using logic and reason to justify organic form") or deconstruction to understand our understanding of biological systems in a mathematical sense (same idea as above)", the process becomes rationalistic which architects love, but at the end... we make space and form...how can that be truly representative of math or the dynamic ever changing and evolving biological system.Although our PROCESS could be rooted in biological systems through a mathematical sense, the end result, our ARCHITECTURE ,is stationary, representative, metaphorical, of this understanding. OUr buildings are not dynamic living breathing moving systems, it literally does not move, it cannot. It is inhabited; it is not growth forms. Can we really go beyond the building? So in conclusion I feel that architects throughout history prefer reason and logic and they genuinely dislike intuition, which in western culture prescribes the masculine (logical) vs. feiminine (intuitive). Thus the use of math, logic and reason to justify things is encouraged, while intuition is usually frowned upon. Which is why Frank Gehry is hated (the extreme) and Rem Koolhaas adored.
Eww, I saw an article in here about MIT students who have created mock up of mechanized buildings which move in response to environmental stimuli. Is that where we are headed , or is that some utopian vision?
<embed allowScriptAccess="never" src="http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf?u=YUhSMGNEb3ZMMk52Ym5SbGJuUXViVzkyYVdWekxtTmtiaTV0ZVhOd1lXTmxMbU52YlM4d01EQTNNek01THprd0x6VTVMemN6TXprMU9UVXdPUzVtYkhZPQ==&d=97" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="600" height="600"></embed><br>Get this video and more at MySpace.com
Hmm interesting....
Metamechanic: But do you think you might be looking too hard. Our buildings are already space and matter... The have plumbing, electricity, movement behind the walls. Thoughts through wireless connections In essense we have already created buildings that are organic in form, that mimic the natural world around us.
And when you think of this, the plumbing, electricity, wireless connections, as space and matter and organic systems, living and breathing, would you not say it is in essence a metaporical prescription?
Or hay, check this out…
If you want to do real “living systems†architecture and not metaphorical poseur stuff what about this. Get a bunch of BEAVERS genetically engineer them to build their dams all together and not know when to stop. Then genetically engineer them to think that huge dams are really sexy have them build dams until the available space is all gone and then move down stream or outwards in concentric rings. Then send them to New Orleans to build levies. In the next hurricane the ones with the less structural sound dams would get wiped out leaving the good ones to breed furiously. The forms of these dams would be truly evolutionary and non designed.
Then we can get some termites set up to chew up McMansions and build giant mud towers full of affordable housing.
It’ll be like Karl Kepecks “war with the newts†.
Newstreamlinedmodel: you think alot through socio political economic structures. Greg Lynn's followers as extensions, beavers to describe the survival of the fitest. Do you have an economics background?
metamechanic: Our buildings are "Dumbed down space and matter"? When do your buildings become "sophisticated" space and matter... plumbing and wireless as " counter productive" and towards the "bottom"? ( I am fascinated by your ideas) but those are harsh generalizations... perhaps too difficult to elaborate on a thread. Anyway... I have not read biomimicry and will this summer.
"if we to take beavers to build dams, we are accepting that their nature is to complicated for us to repeat so we slightly modify them to create what we want."---- In the olden days this was called INTUITION
Now we have RATIONALIZED INTUITION
My economics back ground comes mostly from struggling to make rent in the city. My favorite discussion of metaphor is in JD’s “white mythology†which then leas nicely to “architecture of deconstruction†by Wigley.
Intuition is good if you understand that you, your body, the processes going on in your brain are a machine and the there are parts of you that you don’t have conscious access to. Your tastes are shaped by things larger than you’re self, you are imbedded in history your desires and drives come from dark sources, we work by compulsions and fixations.
To turn to a computer as a mind like your own except more “rational†or “smart†or even “clean†is to turn to an other that is actually less smart and definitely more boring than a person. What does a machine know about our desires that we don’t tell it.
looking forward to it metamechanic...this is interesting discourse.
I found similar correlations when I was teacing art history during grad school. I didn't make any connections to Rem and the Renaissance - though one might argue an association with Platonic laws and Phenomenology - but I agree Lynn is Baroque. The term baroque means "misshapen pearl" and what differentiates Baroque art from Renaissance art is that it emphasizes a sense of time. A still life is a good way to understand Baroque because they can show different elements in various states of life/death. I remember researching this at the time and found there was a woman teaching a course at Columbia. Can't remember her name....
oh wait...I remember what else I thought at the time....that Modern architecture was similar to the Renaissance because of its euclidean geometry. I associated this with mathematical perspective............
i've read many articles which refer to Peter Zumthor's work as having elements of baroque in them. yet his work seems so different to Greg Lynn. i'm not sure that greg Lynn is baroque as his work relies too much on its metaphor and less on the buildings realised atmosphere.
yet another chapter of reenactionary architecturism...
i think this analogy has been made before...
colin rowe and venturi saw their projects as being mannerist forms of modernism (the major bone of contention between the two was the form that modern mannerism should take--collage city on one hand and the decorated shed on the other)
and wasn't a lot of lynn's (and others) work from the folding period based on deleuze's "the fold: leibniz and the baroque", at least in its post-rationalization?
i do think this renaissance, mannerism, baroque corollary is interesting when applied to modern, post-modern, and whatever -ism we are now in (i guess you can take your pick, right?)
if you follow that logic, then i would put rem in either mannerist or baroque--his project is basically a warped form of modernism
That is a pretty strange argument. Deleuze, was drawing a parallel between Leibniz and baroque architecture. You just said that Greg then re-imports the analogy back in to architecture from Deleuze instead of just being baroque, which is an architecture thing in the first place. Lynn gets Deleuze totally wrong as far as I can see but he does do a baroque thing with modernism.
I’ll be so glad when we can stop talking about Greg Lynn. He’s been passé (and absurd) for as long as I can remember but just won’t quite disappear all the way.
blah, blah, blah.....is it just that my coffee hasn't kicked??!!? I was sleeping to Lynn's bs 8 years ago, he's not built or done anything, and yet his name keeps showing up!! Jesus.
His buildings are ugly. Gehry's buildings are pretty. Pretty buildings are better than ugly buildings. That about sums it all up. BS puts everyone to sleep and no one remembers or cares (beyond the young arch student and a very few random profs that need to keep recirculating the bs to keep a job). In the end, crumpled paper wins over long winded Maya games.
Yup, all seems pretty clear.
Try my patented Baroque Pregnancy test. If you fulfill all of the following requirements, then you are "bestimmt Barock".
1. does your work manifest a bifurcation of the real and the illusory?
2. does your work introduce mirroring as a henceforth dominant theme?
3. does your work invert reality into a reenactment of its own illusory mirror?
If you cannot answer yes to any of the above questions, then you are unfortunately not Baroque, however, you can now try my new patented fertility pills.
"I passed the Schlittenfahrt Baroque Pregnancy test, so you can too. Try it today!"
newstreamlinemodel, well after a full weekend of Brazil Beaches it could be easy to fall in with Oscars Crowd. He still has an amazing impact on design in this country and I am forever greatful. Just this morning at the hotel breakfast the staff had arranged all of the little
non-sugar packets around the perimeter of the sauce which also held the sugar bowl. Where there is design in Brazil it is done with great care.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.